Current affairs run through the Grand Canyon

Looking for warm weather thrills? Why not run the Colorado River rapids with Jeremiah Johnson and the Sundance Kid as your guides?

Chris Bergeron

Looking for warm weather thrills? Why not run the Colorado River rapids with Jeremiah Johnson and the Sundance Kid as your guides?

Then climb aboard a raft with great new companions for a "Grand Canyon Adventure," racing down the main waterway of the Southwest in an exhilarating widescreen film at the Mugar Omni Theater in the Museum of Science.

For 50 minutes, Indian guide Shana Watahomigie will lead viewers through boiling "big water" on rafts snaking beneath towering canyons where her people of the Havasupai tribe have lived for centuries. You'll be paddling alongside Wade Davis, famed anthropologist, writer and photographer, who's taking his daughter on a ride through natural history before she leaves for college.

As shown on New England's only 180-degree domed screen, this "Adventure" combines panoramic beauty, adrenaline-pumping thrills and timely environmental lessons that never get in the way of the fun.

Released March 22 on World Water Day and subtitled "River at Risk," this engaging film transcends the standard big screen formula of eye-boggling visuals for kids served with an eco-friendly message that justifies a school field trip.

As produced by Greg MacGillivray, "Adventure" earns its name by remaining personal and true. It shows fairly ordinary parents sharing physical, and even spiritual, discoveries with their daughters as they discover the river's life-giving bounty.

In less than an hour, the film successfully duplicates the planning, adrenaline rush and relaxing interludes of a river trip. It explains the river's importance to Indians living along its shores and the historic exploration of John Wesley Powell, the one-armed Civil War veteran who first mapped it.

"Adventure" never squeezes the fun out of its crucial environmental message. It provides flash floods, gila monsters, capsizing rafts and glorious leaps off cliffs into cool sparkling water.

Narrated by Robert Redford, it delivers a roller coaster ride starting in the Rocky Mountains and finishing with a greater awareness of the critical role endangered rivers like the Colorado play in all our lives.

After 40 years playing glamorous gunslingers and pensive mountain men, Redford delivers a no-nonsense clarion warning that laziness, misguided government policies and outright greed are drying up rivers around the world at an alarming rate.

Redford points out rapid population growth has triggered overdevelopment that's depleting major rivers in India, Africa, China and, surprisingly for many, the American Southwest.

Whether camping with Boy Scouts or climbing Mount Everest, good companions make for a good trip. And viewers on this "Adventure" ride with three very different parents and their daughters, discovering joyful connections with the river that refreshes them and the audience like a cool breeze.

The first Native American to serve as a National Park Ranger river guide, Watahomigie shows her young daughter Cree former Anastazi sites that fell into ruin from a 300-year drought. She explains how their tribe recently fought and defeated an ill-conceived government plan to dam part of the river that would have flooded their ancestral home.

Davis, who has spent years collecting thousands of botanical samples in the Amazon, Andes and Asia, is traveling with his college-bound daughter Tara.

And environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of the murdered senator and presidential candidate, is accompanied by his daughter Kick.

Sharing different sorts of wisdom, Watahomigie and Davis display palpably loving bonds with their daughters that make their trips special in ways an audience can appreciate.

In one stunning scene Davis and Tara set up a tripod camera on a narrow promontory with a spectacular view of mile-deep canyons and the river he calls "the lifeline of seven states and Mexico."

Mixing adrenaline bursts and environmental awareness, "Adventure" switches from rafting the rapids to effective explanations of the damage done by silt buildup and wasteful irrigation technology.

By the trip's end, parents and daughters share a closer bond among themselves and the river that audiences can vicariously experience.

As if speaking for her companions, Watahomigie says, "Rivers can renew our spirits. Sometimes we have to fight for them."

Rather than a hardcore trek across the Gobi Desert on a rusty pogo stick, this is an accessible adventure within physical and financial reach of most viewers.

And, if you can't afford a Colorado River tour, a 30-minute drive to the Concord River provides many of the same natural wonders on a smaller scale.

THE ESSENTIALS:

The Museum of Science is located at Science Park, Boston.

Sponsored locally by The MathWorks, "Grand Canyon Adventure: River at Risk" is showing at the Mugar Omni Theater through Sept. 1.

Theater admission is $9 for adults; $8 for seniors; $7 for children 3 to 11 years. Evening Omni discounts are available after 6 p.m.: $6.50 for adults; $5.50 for seniors; $4 for children.

For more information, or to purchase advance tickets, call 617-723-2500, TTY 617-589-0417, or visit www.mos.org.

For every ticket sold on Earth Day, April 22, the film producers will donate $1 to building wells in Africa.

Earth Month activities will include special events, exhibits and lectures on global warming and presentations about solar energy and gardening.